Years ago, before the farm, before everything in my life fell apart, I had this handpoured, hand painted porcelain teacup that sat on the sill of my kitchen window.

My great grandmother was the potter and the painter.

I never knew her, but I knew of her. She made her own pottery, painted it, and she even invented a kind of gold paint that decorated the edges of her work with just a little touch of elegance and romance.

The cup was a piece of someone I never knew, but it was a sort of legacy that remained long after she was gone.

I never did anything with the cup. It just sat there in the windowsill. I admired it and smiled when I looked at it, but beyond that, it was merely a symbol of someone I never met and knew little about.

Somehow the little teacup became more than a symbol of a person I never knew; it became a thing I loved, protected, and desired to keep safe. No one was allowed to touch it. No one was allowed to use it.

It was special. One of a kind. Irreplaceable.

Breakable.

One day, my very young son could no longer resist the urge to touch the very beautiful, very fragile, breakable, heirloom teacup. He reached out to touch it, grasp it within his sweet, tiny hands.

And it slipped.

And like porcelain hitting a tile floor will do, it broke.

Shattered, actually.

There was no putting it back together again. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…

This tiny, porcelain, beautiful, heirloom, breakable teacup handpoured and hand painted by the great grandmother I’d never met was beyond repair.

At first I was worried my son had hurt himself. But once I learned he was unharmed, I became upset.

Something I cared about had been damaged. And not just damaged, but obliterated. Shattered into sharp, jagged pieces with the ability to cut and draw blood. So it wasn’t just that it was broken, or that I’d wished for it not to be so.

But now, the once beautiful cup that brought so much joy was now a danger.

Once my son was removed from the situation, I turned my attention to the cup.

Picking up the pieces – large shards, small ones, and some so microscopically tiny I’d never find them again – was an effort I’d have rather not made at all.

I didn’t ask for the cup to be broken, and in fact, I’d gone to great lengths to ensure the cup would always remain as it had been. Safe and secure on my windowsill, where I could enjoy gazing upon it – it bringing happiness to me – so long as it was exactly as I wished for it to be.

My life was that beautiful teacup. Perfect. Polished. Glazed. Something I could hold up and smile upon. Something that brought me happiness.

Until a brokenness and a shattering walked into my life like I’d never imagined, desired, or invited.

Shattering is never invited.
Brokenness is never welcomed.

Why would I ever choose to be broken, to have my heart ripped open wide, to have the deepest parts of my soul filleted for all to see?

I wouldn’t; and who would?

No one, not anyone, and nobody.

That’s who.

And yet, there I was.
Raw and wounded.
Dangerous.
Able to use the sharpest parts of my pain to cut and wound others.

To draw blood. Even if not literally, then at least emotionally… and spiritually.

So I did for a while. It felt justified. It felt right. It even felt good sometimes. To rebel. To live in the fullness of my emotions without regard for anyone or anything else.

And everyone would just have to deal with it, because I was hurting. I was broken, and it was my license to break anyone who had the audacity to draw near me. That was the price of being close to me. It wasn’t what I necessarily wanted or set out to do, but it was reality.

Now, I could hide it pretty well when I needed to. It took a concerted effort to bring the nice version of myself to the forefront. That girl was so deeply wounded. The sweet, Christian girl I once was had retreated so far into the darkness, I wasn’t sure she’d ever come out again, even if she wanted to. She certainly would never be the same again.

My pain was a security blanket with which I could envelop myself whenever I saw the need. It was a defense. A shield. A bastion against any more emotional assaults. I would not allow myself to be hurt anymore. I would go down swinging my broken edges however I saw fit. If anyone got cut, they had only themselves to blame for daring get so close.

Underneath all that was raw, I wanted to be kind, sweet, and loving. There was just too much pain.

It became easier to stay hidden. To withdraw. To shrink back. To fade into the darkness of depression, anxiety, anger, and bitterness. Better to be alone than cause harm if I didn’t have to.

Once shattered, how would I ever put myself back together again? I was too tangled. Too twisted. Too messy. Too broken.

What sort of king could ever put me back together again?

Ironically, the pain driving me into the darkness was exactly the pain I needed to bring me into the light.

If you know the rest of this story, then you know I ended up in the ER, believing myself to be experiencing a heart attack. It was the wake up call I needed.

And if you know that part, then you should also know of the redemptive power that the One True King can bring. The healing. The restoration.

I did have a choice. And I’d been choosing the wrong thing.

Would I allow the broken pieces of my story to cut and wound others? Or would I allow the shattered shards to shine against the darkness in order to draw others into the light as well?

Could someone with such darkness residing in them, with so much pain, ever have the ability to allow God to use them for something… better? Something beautiful? To somehow take all that darkness and shine His Light on it to change my mind, my heart, my soul, my life?

To wrestle with the light and the darkness is exhausting, but in the end, only one can win.

Both light and darkness cannot reside in the same place. Darkness will consume, but where there is even a tiny glimmer of light, darkness must flee.

There can be no night where there is day.

God separated them from the very beginning.

Genesis 1:3-5, 16-18 says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light’: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day… And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.”

Never the two shall meet. Because where there is light, there can never be night.

Jesus says in John 9:5 that he is the Light of the world. He is the Lord, who is the Spirit, and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthian 3:17).

Where there is Jesus, there can never be darkness. So if I want to be more and more like Jesus, I cannot pursue darkness. I’d have to make a different choice.

How badly did I want that? Pretty bad.

Only when the bearable discomfort of someone’s choices becomes unbearable will that person be desperate enough to change.

And I was desperate. I couldn’t live my life this way anymore, using my pain to cause others pain. No one ever heals by hurting others.

But God can take pain and use it to transform a person into a conduit for light and good and beauty. For His purposes. For His kingdom. For others.

In 2 Corinthians 7:9-11 Paul says this: “Yet I am glad now, not because you were pained, but because you were pained into repentance [that turned you to God]; for you felt a grief such as God meant you to feel, so that in nothing you might suffer loss… For godly grief and the pain God… permitted… produce a repentance that leads and contributes to salvation and deliverance from evil… For [you can look back now and] observe what this same godly sorrow has done for you and has produced in you…”

Jesus came to bind up our wounds, to heal the heartbroken, to save. And to point us to Himself. Sometimes God allows us pain, not because He is a sadist, but because in His sovereignty, He knows what will best draw us to the Light. I do not begin to comprehend the ways of God, because His ways are higher than my ways. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. But I do know that He used the very thing that drove me into the darkness to draw me to Himself and into the Light.

Because both darkness and light cannot reside in my soul at the same time. I had to make a choice. And praise the Lord, I saw the Light.

So…

I still have that teacup. It’s in a box, tucked away. But I think about it often.

It’s still broken.

It still can never be put back together the same way again.

But it is not trash. No; I actually treasure that teacup more now than I ever did when it was intact.

It is still beautiful because I now have a different perspective on it.

Just as jars of clay once held precious treasure that could only be obtained by smashing the clay, the testimony, witness, and ministry that God has for someone can often only be brought forth by the breaking of that someone. God had to allow my breaking in order to use me.

Though the teacup is broken, it still serves a purpose, and I’d say a better one than it ever had just sitting on my kitchen windowsill.

Because now, it’s not just a pretty thing on the outside. It’s beautiful on the inside.

Once broken, the unpainted porcelain now shines in a different way. The broken shards now catch more light than the teacup alone ever did when it was dressed up with an exterior finish. All the pretty gold paint my great grandmother put on the outside cannot compare to the natural beauty that is the bright, white porcelain inside.

And it never would have been seen if it hadn’t been broken.

Beautifully broken, indeed.